The Morning After
by EnigmaticX
Summary: A vignette/short story detailing what happens after Gunvolt's final battle in the True Ending of Azure Striker Gunvolt (a.k.a. Armed Blue Gunvolt). There is a silver lining here for Gunvolt and Joule, but it will probably take GV some time to see it! Please note that there are spoilers for the True Ending.


A flicker, like a candle lighting, glowed on the walls of the room. The form of the Muse, a girl in blue, with long blonde hair and vividly green eyes, appeared sitting on the foot of the bed.

These green eyes were somber as they looked at the boy beside her. Although not peacefully, Gunvolt was at last sleeping.

After last night, all he'd been able to say was that he wanted to go home. The few people who were really close to him could've possibly hazarded a guess as to some of what lay behind those words, delivered from his death-mask-like expression, but to her, who had lived with him like a brother (or maybe a little more) for nearly the past year and had, after the horrific events of last night, found need to join him in heart and mind, the idea of them returning home had staggering shades of meaning.

Home to the relatively peaceful time only 24 hours earlier when the two of them had lived like a family. Home to when Asimov had been like a father, rather than a revolutionary zealot willing to murder his adopted "son" and an innocent girl before committing genocide. Home to before fighting through five bloodlusty Sumeragi Adepts, a bigoted and unscrupulous vigilante, and a Sumeragi lieutenant's monstrous septimal form in order to save her, and then watching her get slain by this father. Home to before managing to pick himself up and kill this father figure with his own azure lightning.

After events like those, "home" was an idea that seemed tear-wrenchingly beautiful and heart-wrenchingly unattainable.

She looked sadly at his tense sleeping face.

Shortly after arriving at their apartment this morning, he had desperately looked about the darkened cluster of rooms. Her presence has seemed to glow from everything-the potted plant, the table and chairs, the carpet, the walls... It had been a presence that would never return. Not in the way it had been. The silence and the darkness had seemed oppressive, mocking even, or maybe simply empty-like the torn out spaces in his heart. After pushing these aside, he had hurried back and forth across the apartment, torn between taking his clothes and equipment off properly and going to bed as he'd imagined or just collapsing into a chair in their living room and staring at the wall. At times, his emotions had become too much and he'd succumbed to tears, trying to manage his things with blurred eyes and shaking fingers, or else kneeling on the floor and clutching the chair's armrest. Then, she had spoken gently but compellingly in his mind's ear again and gotten him to remove his torn, burned, dirtied, bloody blue outfit and go to bed.

After an agonizing loop of rewatching Asimov shoot both of them; finding her, Joule's, lifeless body; hearing her speak to him in his mind as the Muse for the first time; and witnessing Asimov's final moments, Gunvolt had passed out. His passage into rest had not been graceful or gentle.

Joule looked forward and stared at the wall opposite her, clearing her mind.

Gunvolt's recurring memory of finding her body occurred to her. At one point, he had looked at this memory for a long time. She was so pretty...tender...innocent. Images of a smiling, happy Joule, images of her greetings, being glad to see him when he had come home from a job, had come to his mind. She hadn't wanted to hurt anyone anymore, she had only wanted to be free, to bring light to...his...life. And then she was crushed, like unfeeling, unscrupulous Evil itself had stepped on a bug, deciding that something like that couldn't remain in his life or anyone else's.

After that, he had remembered hearing her voice in his head. It had been elating for him, but also horrifying-because hearing her in his mind made it clear that something irrevocable had happened. Things would never be the same.

At the end of all this, the Muse couldn't bring herself to even smile, even though some of Gunvolt's initial reactions had made her want to blush with pleasure.

She swallowed and blinked as she looked down at the boy who had given her the chance, support, and guidance to remake her life into one of her own.

"Things will be ok," she said, running ethereal fingers over his forehead. "I'm still HERE." She thought for a moment, and then went on. "I've found the reason that I was alive that day. And I needed what happened to help me find it..." She looked at his face with a slightly pleading expression, begging that he understand what she was having difficulty trying to tell him: that she had no regrets about what had happened to her.

She looked down and smiled self-deprecatingly; she knew that he wasn't hearing her anyway.

"Feel better, Gunvolt," she said with a tender smile. "I'm looking forward to being with you as the new me whose life is her own."


End file.
